Like many other cities across the country, Columbus, Ohio, has seen a spike in homicides during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this is a nationwide phenomenon, New York TimesIn a report seeking to explain “how gun violence is spreading in American cities,” Ohio was accused of “loosening gun restrictions.”
The implausibility of this explanation is immediately apparent, as the story begins and ends with the death in June 2021 of 43-year-old Jason Keys, who died in Walnut Hill Park, a “tree-lined neighborhood” in Columbus. Killed in a bizarre dispute.Although era Journalists Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff said the incident was emblematic of how weak gun control can make otherwise safe Columbus neighborhoods more dangerous, but the details of the homicide clearly don’t fit that theory.
Case and his wife had just visited their grandparents’ house when they encountered 72-year-old Robert Thomas, who was carrying a rifle. Prosecutors later said Thomas “believed the couple had let the air out of the tires and poured herbicide on his lawn.” But it wasn’t Thomas who killed Case. Another neighbor, Elias Smith, a 24-year-old former Marine, responded by shooting Keyes seven times from his front steps.
At his murder trial in July 2023, Smith testified that he thought he was protecting his neighbor from Keyes because Keyes had a handgun in his waistband. The jury didn’t buy it. Smith was convicted and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
It’s hard to see how “relaxation of gun restrictions” could have contributed to Keyes’ death. DeWine and Gerberoff noted that it was doubly irrelevant that Smith was armed with “a so-called ghost gun, an AR-style rifle that Mr. Smith assembled from parts ordered online.” First, even if Smith had purchased an off-the-shelf rifle, Case would have died. The second is to “relax gun restrictions” era It does not affect the supply of domestic rifles. More generally, the changes were apparently unrelated to the crime.
DeWine and Gerberoff noted that in 2020, Ohio “enacted a ‘stand your ground’ law with support from gun rights groups that expanded established limits on when a shooting is considered self-defense.” According to 2021 Senate Bill 175, which took effect in April, “the trier of fact shall not consider the possibility of retreat as a factor in determining whether a person uses force in self-defense, to defend another person, or to defend himself.” It is believed that the use of force is necessary to prevent injury, loss or risk to life or safety.
The rules already apply to people at home or in their cars. The new law extends this to “other places to which a person has a lawful right to enter.” Whatever the benefits of this change, it would not affect Smith’s criminal liability because he was standing in front of his home when he fired the gun. His defense failed because he could not prove that he “reasonably believed” that the use of deadly force was “necessary to prevent injury, loss or risk to life or safety”.
Dewan and Gebeloff also pointed to changes made by Ohio lawmakers in 2022, when they “allowed school boards to arm teachers who complete 24 hours of training, eliminated permit and training requirements for concealed weapons, and banned cities from carrying weapons during riots.” The provisions prohibiting gun sales had nothing to do with Smith’s crime and, in any case, they were approved that year. back He killed Case.
Finally, Dewan and Gebeloff note, “lawmakers blocked cities from passing their own gun regulations in 2006” and “repealed bans on high-capacity magazines” in 2014. Enforcement of the Act. These ordinances were enacted in 2022, so logically preventing them from taking effect could not have resulted in Case’s death, even if their requirements were relevant, which they were not.
Smith was a 24-year-old man, not a child, at the time of the shooting. Since he fired seven rounds, the city’s subsequent 30-round limit on magazine capacity would not have had any impact, even in theory. Likewise, state lawmakers repealed magazine restrictions in 2014 that imposed similar restrictions.
In addition to Case being killed, era Documented homicides committed by Columbus teenagers armed with guns over trivial disputes. One of the reasons these teens were able to obtain guns, the report said, is that “the ‘man’ in the family is expected to carry a weapon, even if he is a child.” Safe storage laws may or may not correct that attitude, but to say the least it does related to the problem. era Unlike the “stand your ground” law, it describes unauthorized concealed carry and limits on magazine capacity.
DeWine and Gerbelov also pointed out that gun sales have increased during the epidemic. “According to law enforcement officials,” they said, “a stolen gun in Columbus can cost as little as $50.” They quoted a local activist who said that buying a gun is now as easy as buying marijuana.
It’s unclear what this has to do with “easing gun restrictions.” Stealing a gun remains illegal in Ohio, as does selling a gun to a minor. The minimum age to purchase a long gun is 18, and the minimum age to purchase a handgun is 21.
Although homicides fell overall in 2023, era Notice that they rose up in Columbus. But Dewan and Gebeloff added, “There is optimism that things will be better in Columbus in 2024, and homicide numbers are down significantly so far this year, with 36 as of last week compared to 70 at this time last year.”
Despite this good news, DeWine and Gerberoff still can’t let go of the notion that insufficiently stringent gun laws are hindering progress in this area.”Some criminologists say there is no reason to think homicides can’t fall back to the relatively low levels of the two decades before the pandemic, unless there are far more guns and far fewer restrictions on them,” they wrote. Wan and Gbelov also worry that “the Supreme Court has [guns] More difficult to regulate.
this eraIn short, it is assumed that more guns mean more murders, although this effect was not evident in the decades before the pandemic, when a long-term decline in homicides established the “old normal” despite gun ownership The volume keeps increasing. It also hypothesized that “loosening gun restrictions” led to more homicides during the pandemic, but did not explain exactly how that happened in Columbus or elsewhere. It posits that reducing crime requires tighter gun controls, even though homicides in Columbus and other cities have plummeted under “laxer laws.”When you take these claims for granted, you don’t need evidence, which explains why era Too lazy to offer any.
